TV drama Empire moves to Shomi
Fans of the hip-hop soap opera Empire will soon have to look elsewhere to watch it in Canada as the TV series is being dropped from its prime-time TV slot and is moving to Shomi.
The streaming video service has acquired exclusive Canadian rights for the final half of the show’s second season, which begins airing March 30 on Fox. The deal was made after Empire was dropped by City, which carried the show last fall.
Shomi says each episode will be available within 24 hours after its original U.S. airing. Canadians who receive Fox can still watch episodes on that channel on Wednesday nights.
Though Shomi refuses to disclose viewership numbers, head of content Marni Shulman said the first season always ranks among Shomi’s 10 most-watched shows.
Traditional TV viewers didn’t warm to the series in quite the same way, despite massive hype and U.S. ratings that were through the roof, said Hayden Mindell, vice-president of TV programming and content at Rogers Media.
While Empire routinely placed in the Top 10 for Fox, the Canadian airing never broke the Top 30, according to data compiled by Numeris.
The Canadian Press
PBS gets 24-hour kids’ channel
Young insomniacs are in luck: PBS is launching an around-the-clock channel for children this fall.
The free, 24-hour channel will provide child-friendly fare during prime time and other periods that draw kids, said Paula Kerger, PBS’s chief executive. Member stations now get up to 12 hours daily of kids’ programming. The service also will be available online.
PBS’s announcement comes amid a flurry of growth in children’s programming on TV and the Internet, with heavyweight players including Netflix, HBO and Amazon.
The new channel will include PBS series Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, and new series Nature Catand Ready Jet Go! Longtime public TV program Sesame Street was not included in the announcement, but PBS said the full schedule remains in development.
The Associated Press
Len Stuart funded SCTV
The much loved comedy television series SCTV owes its existence to the personal bank account of entrepreneur Len Stuart, who financed its first seven shows. It ultimately made actors Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Harold Ramis, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas and Joe Flaherty household names. The businessman, who made money in a variety of ventures including casinos, was co-partner in Second City Inc. with Andrew Alexander since 1976.
He died Sunday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., after a short illness.
“He was a force of nature,” Alexander said. Stuart provided the business acumen, while Alexander looked after the creative side.
“We had a great relationship. He ran many businesses; ours was a bit of a sideline. He was a great partner for me, a good business head on his shoulders.” Trish Crawford
Don Owen blazed film trails for Canada
Don Owen, a Toronto filmmaker who helped introduce Canadians to the world and the world to Canadians, has died at the age of 84.
Owen wrote and directed Nobody Waved Good-bye, the landmark 1964 movie of youth rebellion that began as a short documentary on probation officers for the NFB, where Owen worked. He managed to scrape together enough funds to make a feature film instead, changing the focus to a suburban teen scofflaw, played by Peter Kastner.
It was shot in just three weeks, in the realist style of the Direct Cinema movement championed by Owen’s fellow NFB filmmakers Michel Brault and Gilles Groulx. Owen made a splash in Europe three years later with The Ernie Game, starring the late Alexis Kanner, intended as part of a CBC trilogy honouring Canada’s Centennial in 1967 but judged too extreme for public broadcast.
It won praise at the Cannes and Berlin festivals and later took the Best Feature Film prize at the 1968 Canada Film Awards, a precursor to the Canadian Screen Awards.
Owen stopped making films in the late 1980s but was honoured with a career retrospective at TIFF in 2005. Peter Howell